


For You

by sayoko



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Proposals, gave myself diabetes with this, kuroken week prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 00:24:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12829344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sayoko/pseuds/sayoko
Summary: “Ah! Wait a moment!” he said and run in the opposite direction.Kenma squinted. He hoped Kuroo had forgotten a bag or something because there was no way he was going to give him another toss that day.Kuroo passed the playing field and stopped by some bushes behind it, which was weird, because Kenma couldn’t imagine what Kuroo could have forgotten in the bushes. Soon enough, he was back at his side.“For you,” he said with a wide smile.Kenma widened his eyes in confusion. There, in the middle of Kuroo’s palm, was a small, fragile, blue flower.





	For You

**Author's Note:**

> A late work for kuroken week!
> 
> This may contain even more sugar than my usual stuff. I am embarrassed but not sorry. Very stressful week. Necessary.

The first time it happened, they were kids.

Somehow, even though they had met barely a week ago, Kuroo had already managed to get Kenma to play with him. The detail that made this so special was that it wasn’t any usual kid’s game; it was volleyball. Kuroo had gotten Kozume Kenma to play with him with a real ball, in the real outside world, under the real springtime sun.

That week, both kids had gone to the park near their homes almost every day after school. Kenma had never visited that park so often before, not even on holidays. It felt surreal. It felt exhausting.

“One more!”

Kenma glared at the other kid as he tried to catch his breath. What was his deal? Kenma was not athletic. He had humored Kuroo those days but only because he was hoping he would realize this, get bored, and leave him alone. But now a week had passed, and Kenma couldn’t understand why he was still so determined to get _him_ , of all people, to play with him.

_I won’t improve! I won’t become better from one day to the next! Go find someone else to toss to you!!_

“Come on Kenma! One more!”

Kuroo threw the ball at him but Kenma wasn’t going to make any effort to toss it back this time. He was tired, real tired, so he decided to catch the ball and keep it hostage so Kuroo would give up and call it a day already. That didn’t go entirely as planned. His legs, the traitors, failed him completely and when Kenma caught the ball, he was pushed down to the ground with its force

 _Oh no._ That had been pathetic. Kenma had fallen on his butt and Kuroo had seen it all and he was going to start laughing at him with his hyena laugh any second now.

“Wah!! You alright?”

Ok so he was not laughing, but there was definitely a trace of mockery in his voice and he was smirking as if ready to laugh at whatever Kenma said next.

“No!,” Kenma answered with a frown on his face. He was not alright, he was tired and hungry and now his clothes were dirty and his butt hurt. “I don’t wanna play anymore.”

“Ah, ok…”

Kenma looked at the ground and held the ball tightly in his arms. He was trying not to get angry, but it was difficult as he was so frustrated at himself.

He sucked at sports. That was no secret. If Kuroo kept going back to his house every day after school to drag him out to play (though really there was no physical dragging, just a lot of loud, annoying insistence), it could only be for one reason: to make fun of him. Maybe he didn’t laugh that much in front of him, but that didn’t mean he didn’t do it behind his back, with his real friends. Because Kuroo and Kenma were not friends. Someone as cool as Kuroo Tetsurou had no reasons to want to be friends with him.

_But maybe if I was better, even if just at volleyball, maybe he could, maybe we could be –_

“Let me help you.”

Lost in his thoughts as he was, Kenma didn’t notice Kuroo going to his side, so he didn’t have time to refuse when the taller kid helped him up.

Kuroo wasn’t laughing. He was calm and gentle and Kenma stood still as he even tried to get the dust off his clothes.

“There!” Kuroo announced triumphal with a big smile, but no laughter, and no mockery.

“Thank you,” Kenma answered softly. Kuroo’s smile was so bright; he had suddenly forgotten what he was so pissed about.

“Maybe we should go home now,” Kuroo said.

Kenma nodded, thankful and eager to change to his pajamas and slip into his bed and play videogames for a while, if he didn’t fall asleep first.

They had taken just a few steps when Kuroo stopped abruptly.

“Ah! Wait a moment!” he said and run in the opposite direction.

Kenma squinted. He hoped Kuroo had forgotten a bag or something because there was no way he was going to give him another toss that day.

Kuroo passed the playing field and stopped by some bushes behind it, which was weird, because Kenma couldn’t imagine what Kuroo could have forgotten in the bushes. Soon enough, he was back at his side.

“For you,” he said with a wide smile.

Kenma widened his eyes in confusion. There, in the middle of Kuroo’s palm, was a small, fragile, blue flower.

“For… me?”

Kuroo nodded eagerly, unaffected by Kenma’s confusion. “Because you’re such a good friend!”

Kenma’s lips parted in a silent 'Ah'.

He examined Kuroo’s face, looking for any signs that contradicted his words. But there were none. Kuroo was not lying, and he was not laughing and he was not mocking him.

And he had just called him ‘friend’.

He felt so happy that he didn’t know what to say, so he just cupped his hands for Kuroo to drop the flower there.

It was no proper way to hold a flower, he knew that, but he was still holding the ball and the flower was too small and too soft and Kuroo had cut it too close to the petals, so Kenma didn’t know how to hold it without crushing it if not that way. He absolutely did not want to crush it. He wasn’t really a fan of flowers, but this one was one of the prettiest he had ever seen, he had decided.

Kenma gave it a last look before closing his hands, careful to give the flower enough space to make it home safely.

“Thank you,” he said.

Kuroo scratched the back of his neck. “No problem. Ah! Let me help you with that.”

Kuroo took the volley ball from Kenma’s arms, but he continued to shield the flower in the same way.

Once back in his room, Kenma placed the flower on his bedside table, and stared at it until his mother called him for dinner.

 

 

The flower gifting kept repeating after that.

It didn’t really follow a logic, or a reason. Sometimes Kuroo just appeared next to him, hands curled into a ball of mystery, his personal flower gashapon.

Kenma accepted all of them. He never said anything, but the care he put when transporting the flowers back home was enough testament of his thankfulness.

One day, though, when Kenma was about eleven, someone saw them.

 It happened during a meeting of the Kuroo family, to which Kenma was invited per Kuroo’s request. His mother had seen no problem in this. Kenma had, but in the end he went anyway, per Kuroo’s request.

So well, an aunt saw them; she saw Kuroo ungraciously cutting a flower from his backyard, and Kenma graciously accepting it in his hands like an offering.

“Hey, Tetsurou,” she stopped them, “boys don’t give flowers, and most certainly not to other boys.”

The people around them gave them throaty laughs, but Kuroo wasn’t laughing.

“Oh,” was all he managed to say.

Kenma saw his friend’s smile disappear and decided that he didn’t like Kuroo’s relatives. He also clutched his hands tight around his gift. No one was taking it away from him, even if he was not supposed to get flowers, as that auntie had said.

 

 

After that day, Kuroo stopped cutting flowers for Kenma.

But that didn’t mean he stopped giving him gifts.

He just changed the object. Since flowers weren’t acceptable, he just turned to candies. Other times he got bonbons, or gum, or tiny phone charms. Anything that Kenma could like and was small and he could hide in his hands.

Now, the gift was always a surprise. All Kenma knew was that if Kuroo approached him with his hands curled into a ball, he had to extend his to receive whatever he was giving him.

(Bugs were not a problem. He had tried that joke once, only for Kenma to throw back the bug… right to his face. He didn’t try again after that.)

As they grew older, the act became so natural to them that Kenma started to actually ask for things. He just went to Kuroo’s side and extended his hands to him in silent pleading. In response to this new situation, Kuroo first improvised and handed him whatever small object was near, but later on he started stocking sweets in his bag, just in case Kenma wanted one.

By the time they were finishing school, they had become so close that sometimes Kenma would just openly search through Kuroo’s bag until he found treasure. Kuroo was fine with it; after all, he also ventured into his friend’s bag sometimes, though it was mostly to kidnap his PSP.

Years passed and, even though their closeness remained strong, and later on official, the flower ceremony became a thing of the past, a childhood memory, only remembered when Kenma happened to come across the old super sentai bento box where he had stored all the flowers Kuroo had given him, all mixed now, a collection of dried petals and stems.

The flowers were not a memory they recalled often, but somehow, the ritual with which Kenma had acquired them was ingrained in them.

The proof was that day. That day when, even though they had not revisited the ritual in years, their bodies still repeated the movements with the smoothness of a wave caressing the sand.

That day, Kuroo was clearly nervous but Kenma didn’t push it. They both knew that sometimes both needed time to put their minds in order, or the guts to confess something that no one but the other would ever know.

So Kenma didn’t push it. He continued to dip his spoon on their 30 cm tall ice cream cup as if everything was normal, though he was pending of all the tell-tale signs of Kuroo’s distress. The way he fidgeted with his hands, the way he evaded looking at him upfront, they way his smile continued yet between pursed lips, they were all signals that Kenma had learnt to catch on perfectly.

Some minutes later, Kuroo straightened his back and called for Kenma’s attention.

“Kenma.”

Kenma looked up at him. Whatever news he had to share, they didn’t seem to be bad enough to somber his face.

In fact, they actually seemed to be embarrassing ones, seeing as Kuroo’s cheeks were starting to resemble the pink in their cherry ice cream.

Kuroo parted his lips and they moved awkwardly like they had forgotten how to actually pronounce words.

So he took a deep breath. Kuroo took a deep breath and stiffened his shoulders as he got up his chair. With the same stiffness, he stood right in front of Kenma, and then he kneeled.

“Kenma… You have been my friend for as long as I have memory, and you have always been a shoulder to lean on, an ear always willing to listen, and arms to hold onto when times get too rough.”

Kenma swallowed his ice cream very, very slowly. He was used to Kuroo being corny, even on public on occasions, but _this_ , this kind of speech –

“I love you. I know I’ve told you many times already, but I’ll never stop because it will never stop being true,” Kuroo continued as he took something from his jacket’s pocket. Even though he held it between both hands, almost as if trying to cover it completely, it was obvious it was a ring box. “I love you, and I love each moment I spend with you, and–”

Kuroo paused, and the sudden silence that took over the shop was loud enough to wake Kenma from his surprise. He immediately reassessed the state of his partner. He was looking down at his feet, frowning, probably reconsidering what he was about to do. Maybe he was really considering backing down. It could be. Even after so many years together, Kuroo sometimes still feared that he would screw up some day and make Kenma leave. As if it was even possible for him to screw up, or for Kenma to ever leave him.

“Yes!,” Kenma almost shouted, waking Kuroo from his daze now.

“I– But Kenma I haven’t even finished!”

“Then finish already!”

For a second, Kuroo looked like he was going to keep on arguing, but then he just smirked, and after clearing his throat, he was continuing his speech.

“Ok, as I was saying… I love you, and I can’t imagine life without you, nor do I want to. Kenma,” he paused again, but this time only to open the blue velvety box hiding in his hands, “will you make me the happiest man on Earth by spending the rest of your life with me?”

 _So corny_. A speech and a real engagement ring was just the level of sappiness that Kenma expected of Kuroo (his misleading image of cool/bad guy shattered for him so, so many years ago). Even so, Kenma couldn’t help feeling overwhelmed. He pursed his lips into a thin line. His nose was starting to itch and his eyes to water, but he couldn’t afford letting out any sign of how him actually proposing had affected him. If he spoke and his voice broke or if it became too obvious his eyes were teary, didn't matter if it was of joy, Kuroo wouldn’t let it go ever again in his whole life.

So he just nodded, decided and repeatedly, and he extended his hands.

“Ah,” they both said in unison when they realized that, instead of just his left hand, Kenma had extended both hands, cupped as if waiting for any other regular gift.

Kuroo didn’t comment on it nor gave Kenma time to feel embarrassed about it. Instead, he quickly took the ring from the little box and placed it in Kenma’s hands. Then, he closed Kenma’s hands and covered them with his own.

The muffled sound of murmuring started to fill the space around them, but they couldn’t focus on anything that wasn’t the other’s face. Finally, unable to find a string of coherent words to respond to Kuroo’s, Kenma gave up and abandoned his chair to join his now fiancé on the floor. He wrapped his arms around him, free hand clutching at the fabric of his shirt. Kuroo hugged him back, his hold as tight as Kenma’s. Even though he couldn’t see him, he was certain that he was smiling. Even though he was silent, he was certain he understood exactly how he felt.

 


End file.
